Over the weekend Supermono released a version 1.1 update for Forever Drive, which fixes many of the issues that I outlined in my previous post. From the patch notes:

* You can now report bad tracks from a button and it will be erased from our servers once it has been vetted via email
* You can earn credits by racing lots of tracks and also sometimes as gifts
* 5 free track slots
* You can now EDIT your existing tracks to make it better without the need to purchase more slots
* You no longer boost when crossing a timeline
* New Monorail scenery to add to your tracks
* Help webpage linked from in game, along with a helpful Video to show you why you should get HI COMBOS!

Already there are far fewer broken tracks being served up by the game, suggesting that the developer is acting on email reports quickly. Having to submit reports via email is a bit odd (and I can imagine that some players will have a problem with having to share their email address to use this function), but I suppose the intention is to discourage players from spamming the report button for every track.

Making credits earnable through gameplay is a major improvement. The game still requires a lot of grinding, but there’s now much more incentive to use the complementary credits early on to unlock a better car.

The underlying problem of the game’s economy being based on players ‘gambling’ credits to race on user generated tracks that can include broken tracks made by griefers still persists. Perhaps the next step should be to only include tracks in the Super XP Mode that have a net positive rating, zero (or very few) reports and a minimum number of previous plays (say, 100).

There are still a couple of other intermittent niggles outstanding. If a track ends on a tight curve it’s possible to crash into a wall between tracks (when steering control has been taken away from the player). This should be changed so it doesn’t reset the combo meter.

There’s also the rain. The game will sometimes randomly decide to change the weather conditions for the duration of one track. The wet weather setting massively degrades the car’s handling, making the game more frustrating (and less fun) while offering no compensatory reward. It’s basically a random “game over” button that can cut short your run at any time. It shouldn’t necessarily be removed altogether, but the effect on handling could stand to be toned down a lot.

Overall, though, Forever Drive is now much closer to fulfilling its potential. It’s great to see a developer taking on board user feedback so quickly and comprehensively.